LiveLeak bans future ISIS beheading videos

When YouTube started to remove gory videos of journalist James Foley's beheading this week, the next stop for some Internet surfers was LiveLeak, a streaming video website that specializes in hosting graphic videos that other sites won't touch.

There was so much interest in the Foley video Wednesday that LiveLeak warned visitors about possible slowdowns due to "an abnormally high volume of traffic."

But Thursday, the site's operators announced an out-of-character decision: "We will not be showing further beheadings carried out by" ISIS.

"We've shown the world the true horror of this form of execution more than once in the past and we cannot find any compelling reason to even be thought of as promoting the actions of this group," LiveLeak said in a statement.

The (unnamed) LiveLeak operators said they'd had several meetings about the Foley beheading video. The site has provided access to other such videos in the past.

But "there is every chance - given the rumours of hostage stockpiling currently doing the rounds - that we could see a return to the dark times of 2004/5 when beheadings happened with an alarming and depressing regularity," the statement said. "It's this which prompted us" to effectively ban future ISIS videos.

The site added that "this does not mean we won't continue to show graphic media should we deem it reasonable to do so, we will continue despite the regular condemnation, in other words for the most part nothing is going to change... We simply will not host further beheadings" from ISIS.